After Interruption, No Stopping Sharapova at French Open

Maria Sharapova pounced on Samantha Stosur to win the final nine games of the match.

Michel Spingler / Associated Press

By BEN ROTHENBERG

June 2, 2014

PARIS — Maria Sharapova looked as if she might be bowing out of the French Open in the fourth round to Samantha Stosur — until she heard a call.

It was not a call from a higher power, but a telephone call a few feet from the court.

After Stosur missed her first serve of the game at 4-4 in the second set, the cellphone of a fan sitting in the fourth row near Sharapova began to ring. Sharapova held her racket up to ask Stosur to wait for the interruption to stop. Stosur halted her service rituals and obliged. She then double-faulted and spiked a ball angrily into the ground.

Though the episode was minor, Sharapova pounced on Stosur’s momentary lapse in concentration. She won 20 of the next 25 points, and the last nine games of the match, to rally for a 3-6, 6-4, 6-0 victory.

“I actually can’t believe from that moment I didn’t win another game,” Stosur said. “How quickly things can turn. Even the third set I didn’t feel like I played a bad set. It’s a tough one.”

Sharapova said that she had felt a turning point as well.

“There are so many emotions you go through in a match, and then there are always moments where you feel a bit of a momentum change,” Sharapova said. “I think you feel a lot more as a player than maybe a spectator, just because sometimes when I watch tennis and I know it’s a really important point and someone there is like eating strawberries and cream and just like, it’s not really on. ‘Do you guys realize what an important point this is?’ Even if it’s 15-all, unless it’s break point, they don’t really get excited. You always feel momentum changes as a player.”

Sharapova delivered a particularly emphatic performance in the third set. She screamed and pumped her fists after winning points in a variety of impressive manners, even once with a lob.

“I love competing,” Sharapova said. “That’s one of the best parts of the sport. Gives me the greatest pleasure, and I don’t think anything else in life can give me that. I’m using that to my advantage while I can.”

Sharapova has grown to especially enjoy playing on clay, once considered her weakest surface.

Her next opponent is Garbiñe Muguruza, who opened up the path for Sharapova in the second round by knocking out her projected quarterfinal opponent Serena Williams. Sharapova has not defeated Williams in nearly 10 years, and Williams has accounted for three of Sharapova’s four losses on clay in the past three years. After Williams’s departure, Sharapova became the favorite to win the tournament.

Muguruza said she had modeled herself after Sharapova.

“I’ve watched her play, and I think there are similar things in the way we play,” Muguruza, 20, said. “We’re both tall, we both have very long arms, and she’s very aggressive.

“She’s a competitor. We try to copy the best features of the winning players.”

Sharapova is not one to interact socially with her opponents, another approach of her career that has been copied by some, including the 20-year-old Canadian quarterfinalist Eugenie Bouchard.

“I don’t think the tennis tour is the place to have friends,” said Bouchard, who defeated Angelique Kerber in straight sets Sunday. “For me it’s all competition.”

Sharapova echoed the sentiment again Sunday night.

“I treat my career and my work as a very serious profession, and I know that what has got me my success is the fact that I’m a big competitor and that I don’t want to give anyone a chance,” Sharapova said. “I was never here from Day 1 to make friendships. This is a battlefield for me, and I want to win. I think you see that passion when I’m on the court.”

She added, “Sometimes it’s not very pretty, but at the end of the day, if I get the job done, I’m happy.”